Entertainment

Orkut in Trouble Over Flag-Burning

Orkut, Google's only major social network until they snapped up YouTube this week, seems to cause them nothing but trouble. Not only do they have constant problems with criminal activities by some of their Brazilian users, but now they're in trouble with an Indian court for the alleged spread of hatred against India. A picture of a burning Indian flag bearing an anti-India message was put on the site and a group called "We Hate India" has been set up. As a result, the Bombay High Court has directed the Maharashtra government to issue a notice to Google, according to the Times of India. Google responded by saying they're taking the issue seriously, but these matters are more complex because Orkut is global - complying with the laws of one country could negatively affect users elsewhere. What's more, Orkut is a US site that complies with US law.

But it's wrong to paint Orkut as an utter failure - if you're a Brazilian, it's the number one place to network online. Amazingly, more than 9% of the Brazilian population are registered users of Orkut. Bearing in mind that Brazil has around 186 million citizens, that makes Orkut a big player. Add in the members from other countries, and you've got a total of more than 29 million registered users. Comparing registered users is pretty inaccurate, but that does put Orkut in the same ballpark as Bebo (22m?) and Xanga (27m?). The Google-YouTube deal might be seen as buying their way into social networking, but Google already has a fairly large property in this space.

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